From the Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday November 19
Beyond the great divide
If Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus, that spells big trouble here on Earth
By Jonathan Freedland
Call Relate: this is a couple that could use some marriage guidance. No, not the prime minister and his newly arrived visitor: they seem to get along just fine. They're like the sweethearts in the old Tracey Ullman song. No matter how many people insist their romance is wrong, their bond only gets stronger. "Why should it matter to us if they don't approve... 'cause they don't know 'bout us/And they've never heard of love."
No, George Bush and Tony Blair do not need counselling just yet. Nor do Britain and the United States. Most Brits seem to have kept a cool head about that relationship. As the Guardian poll showed yesterday, nearly two thirds still regard the US as a force for good in the world even if one third would have preferred the president to have stayed at home.
Still, there is one relationship that is in dire need of help. It's the one in which Britain is so often caught in the middle, trying to play peacemaker. The rift to be healed is between Europe and America.
For the second half of the 20th century, they were solid allies; in just the first few years of the 21st, they have fallen out badly. The poll numbers are instructive. In this month's now notorious EU survey, asking Europeans which nations posed a grave threat to world peace, the US scored 53% - level with Iran and North Korea, the two remaining arms of Bush's "axis of evil". A September survey found just 45% of Europeans keen on a strong US global presence - a drop of nearly 20% on the previous year. In France, 70% believed global US leadership was "undesirable".
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